All Blacks lose another player to injury

Add another All Black to the casualty ward for the remainder of the test season.

Winger Leroy Carter has joined the list of players who will miss the Northern Tour, after surgery on a high ankle injury.

The winger was injured in the first Bledisloe Cup test against Australia at Eden Park after a hip-drop tackle by Wallabies flanker Rob Valetini, who unsuccessfully tried to prevent Carter from scoring.

The 27-year-old All Black was helped from the field after the incident in the 50-19 win and ruled out of the reverse fixture in Sydney on Saturday, which the All Blacks won 43-21.

Carter was replaced in the starting side for the second test by Josh Moorby, who is expected to play a key role for the rest of the campaign.

The All Blacks have confirmed six injured players will be unavailable for the Northern Tour, which begins in Scotland on November 8 (NZT).

Captain Ardie Savea (shoulder), loose forward Luke Jacobson (elbow), winger Caleb Clarke (shoulder), first five-eighths Ruben Love (ankle) and prop Ollie Norris (knee) had already been ruled out.

The All Blacks are yet to confirm the status of loose forward Shannon Frizell and hooker Samisoni Taukei’aho, who were injured in the second half on Saturday.

All Blacks forwards coach Jason Ryan told Newstalk ZB’s D’Arcy Waldegrave on Sunday: “We’re not sure on Shannon, but usually those sort of non-contact injury injuries, it would be remiss of me to chuck something out there and say ‘we think it’s this’ because we need to get him scanned, which will be Monday”.

“Same with Samisoni Taukei’aho, he went off with a little bit of a tightness in his calf, so we’ll just see where he’s at and he’ll get scanned as well.”

The All Blacks have three tests against Scotland, Wales (November 15) and England (November 22), which finish off their round robin in the Nations Championship.

The Nations Championship will then conclude with a finals round on the weekend of November 27-29, with six tests when Northern Hemisphere teams play the corresponding Southern Hemisphere seed.